


away game

by verboseDescription



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Pandemonium Artists - Freeform, i just think if your motto is 'paint the town dead' the team should be a little spooky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:47:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27597089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verboseDescription/pseuds/verboseDescription
Summary: The FWXBC prepares to go up against a new team. The Pandemonium Artists... well, they have a lot of team spirit.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 12





	away game

Pandemonium is a city in twilight. A ghost town, in the worst possible way.

Before today, Arturo wouldn’t say that the shadows were a place, just a door players sometimes stepped through to bring someone else back from the great beyond. The shadows were the scales between life and death. A debt that needed paying. And now, it was Pandemonium.

The darkness here wasn’t a night sky. It’s an inky black sea of wrongness. The same swirling patterns that haunts Arturo’s dreams, when it feels like being a creature that has dreams. And the Artists barely bat an eye as that darkness follows them onto the field.

It’s bad luck that the FWXBC’s batting against them first. Summers Pony might think they’re aching for a fight, but Arturo knows they’re not ready to go against a city of the sleepless dead.

There’s a mural of the players on a stadium wall. This was supposed to be their graveyard. A tribute,  _ in memoriam.  _ Arturo’s seen a lot of art like that in the short time its been in the city. Pandemonium always honors its dead and right now, all of its residents were in need of a grave. 

Instead of water, the Artists have two jugs filled with black coffee on their side of the field. A player on a bench nods their head and immediately begins flickering. Someone slaps them awake and hands them a mug of coffee. There’s too much work left for them to rest just yet, they tell their teammate. Arturo’s not sure if they’re talking about blaseball, or the sketch the flickering Artist is working on. Either way, the Artist seems more annoyed at that then their new flickering status.

Is it too early to give in? Arturo’s seen how the shadows can change a person. No matter how many hi-fives they see exchanged between players, no matter how much care they put into their custom jackets and constructive criticism, the ump’s are still going to be on  _ their  _ side, not it’s. 

But, that was blaseball for you. The weirder you are, the stronger you’d get. Arturo’s always been plenty weird, but it’s not sure if it’s weird enough to fight off a team keeping themselves alive through sheer stubbornness and terrible coffee.

Nothing Arturo can do about it now, though. Aside from talk to Stu again. Another round of hypnosis might make it feel better, especially now that Teddy couldn’t tell Arturo off for using it as a pregame ritual. Then again, better not. Didn’t want to give the other team any ideas.

One of the Artists pulls out a plaintbrush and hops into the stands. The paint that drips off is too thick to be called a liquid. It sparkles like midnight as the Artist runs the brush through a row of the seats. As soon as they finish, the seats fill with flickering bodies. Of course. Why isn’t he surprised that their fans are just as dead as they are?

Another player grabs a megaphone and steps out onto the field.

_ “Pandemonium Artists!”  _ they cry out, lifting their bat in the air.

_ “Paint the town dead!”  _ the fans cry back. They start screaming, wailing like banshees as the Artist still on the stands keeps painting the seats. While they scream, the rest of the band starts making their way onto the field, chanting the phrase as they go. The Artist painting jumps back down to the field. Someone shouts at them to clean their brush, so they dump a water bottle on it and slip it onto a ring on their belt. The Artist with the megaphone throws them a catcher’s mitt.

“That’s their gimmick?” Dracaena snorts. “It’s 2020. I mean, who isn’t at least a  _ little  _ dead?”

“Just because you’re a vampire doesn’t mean you get to be the judge on how someone uses their afterlife,” Nagomi says. “I don’t see Tot complaining.”

“I’m not a—”

“Yeah, I don’t care.”

The Artists fans are still howling. Arturo thinks there might be some living fans now, but it’s hard to say. Some of them are rattling chains, and, okay, does feel a little on the nose, but they’re doing it with so much frenzied cheer that it’s enough to freak out Summers Preston. 

Arturo, though, is starting to feel right at home.

The thing is, Drac’s right. Being dead didn’t make you horrifying. Arturo’s not about to freak out just because he’s on the same team as a vampire or a mummy, but the shadows—well, they were  _ the shadows.  _ You didn’t get to a place like that by having a quiet death. And you didn’t get back by playing fair.

But Arturo’s a Garage first, and a FWXBC second. It can’t be scared of any team that’s this good at working up a crowd. The echoing screams of the Artists’ haunted stadium reminds Arturo of its favorite kind of gigs. You don’t get that kind of energy from a bad team. The Artists might be raising the dead, but the real magic was the way they made those spirits soar. 

Of course Arturo’s appreciating the show. The Pandemonium Artists make death look punk as  _ hell. _

**Author's Note:**

> this isnt perfect but i saw the artists' stat and i got really excited for potential lore please think about this with me
> 
> the paint is called 'bllack plaint' it was made in a lab by famous blaseball artists and it's technically a new color but most ppl just see it as black. the artists have it bc they have connections to the industry, but there's a limited supply. the artists use it to raise the dead every game. sometimes members who are in the shadows join to watch but it's generally assumed that if a player is in the shadows, its because they were up for a month straight working on commissions so they're taking a long nap.  
> the artists also make a lot of fanart for each other and call it "honoring the dead" & stuff like that, since it's so easy for them to get sent to the shadows. A player doesn't actually have to be in the shadows for them to get fanart.
> 
> ive been in the blaseball server for like a day so i don't know how to the rules on making lore canon and stuff but i promise you i have thoughts about everything! you can find me on tumblr at ofdreamsanddoodles  
> Yay pandemonium! Let's make some noise!


End file.
